Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

  “Go with you to Scotland Yard? Why?” Father demanded as the fog swirled around us.

  “We have questions,” the ruffian said.

  “About what?”

  “The Ratcliffe Highway murders.”

  “Everything I have to say about them is in my latest book. Why do you care about something that happened forty-three years ago?”

  “Not forty-three years ago,” the ruffian said. I have difficulty referring to him as a detective inspector.

  “Of course it was forty-three years ago,” Father replied. “Do detectives not have schooling? Subtract eighteen hundred and eleven from—”

  “Last night,” Ryan said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The murders happened last night.”

  The statement made the air feel colder. Even in the fog, I could see Father straighten.

  “Murders last night?” he whispered.

  “Can anyone account for your activities between ten and midnight?” Becker asked. From Ryan, the question would have been challenging, but the constable made it sound respectful.

  “No.”

  “Please tell us where you were.” Again, the constable’s tone was assuring.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Ryan interrupted rudely. “Does your laudanum habit weaken your memory?”

  “My memory is excellent.”

  “Then perhaps you were too affected by the drug to know what you were doing last night.”

  “I know what I was doing. I just don’t know where.”

  Ryan shook his head. “What opium does to people.”

  Constable Becker stepped forward, kindly asking me, “May I have your name, miss?”

  “Emily De Quincey. I’m his daughter.”

  “Can you help us understand what your father is trying to say?”

  “I meant what I said. It’s perfectly clear,” Father told them. “If you’d asked me what I was doing instead of where I was, I could have told you I was walking.”

  “Walking? That late?” Ryan interrupted again as the fog continued to engulf us.

  I began to sense a stratagem that they had calculated before we arrived, the ruffian trying to make us feel threatened while the constable was solicitous, in the hopes that the contrast between them would confuse us into making careless statements.

  “My father walks a great deal,” I explained. “Especially if he is making an effort to reduce his laudanum intake, he spends much of his time walking.”

  “One summer in the Lake District,” Father said proudly, “I walked two thousand miles.”

  “Two thousand miles?” Ryan looked puzzled.

  “It’s cold out here,” Father said. “Instead of pursuing this conversation for the neighbors to hear, may we go inside?”

  “Where we need to go is Scotland Yard,” Ryan insisted.

  “And is there a necessary on your wagon, or will you stop on the way so that we can use one?” Father added with a turn to me, “Excuse the reference, my dear.”

  Now Father was the one employing a stratagem. He has never used a genteel synonym for a privy.

  “I forgive you, Father.”

  “The necessary in the house is remarkable,” Father told Ryan and Constable Becker. “Our housekeeper tells me it is modeled after a water device introduced at the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park three years ago. ‘A flush with every push,’ I believe the motto is. She says that the inventor charged a penny a flush. Almost six million visitors to the Great Exhibition. Imagine, a penny from each of them.”

  Ryan sighed. “Very well. Let’s go into the house.”

  Mrs. Warden hovered as the four of us entered the parlor. Her look suggested that she expected nothing less than that the Opium-Eater would be questioned by the police.

  “I’ll light a fire,” she said, obviously wanting to overhear.

  “Don’t bother,” Ryan told her. “We won’t stay long enough for the room to get warm.”

  “Father hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Please, bring tea and biscuits,” I told Mrs. Warden.

  But she didn’t move.

  “Please,” I emphasized.

  Mrs. Warden reluctantly went to do her duty, her hooped dress brushing against the doorway. I assumed she would do her best to eavesdrop from the kitchen.

  There was a lot of activity after that, with everyone—thanks to the cold outside—using what Father kept calling the necessary. It is on the main floor. Although this well-to-do section of London is serviced by a company that pumps water into homes, the pressure of the water is not dependable. A necessary on the upper floor would not receive enough water to function.

  During the confusion of the coming and going, I noticed that Father went upstairs, however. Soon afterward, he returned to the parlor. Despite the cold temperature of the room, his brow had a film of moisture. This morning the moisture—caused by exertion—had been shiny, but now it was dull, and from experience, I knew that could mean only one thing.

  “Oh, Father,” I said with disappointment.

  He shrugged. The left side of his overcoat had a bulge, no doubt caused by a flask of laudanum. I might have expected it, given the pain he feels when relating to strangers.

  “What do you mean, ‘Oh, Father’? Is something the matter?” Constable Becker asked, glancing from my face to my father’s. The lamp in the parlor showed that the constable has a scar on his chin. Despite it, he is not difficult to look at.

  “My daughter is merely indicating that she is fatigued.”

  “Quite the contrary, Father.”

  “Last night,” Ryan said. “You went walking?”

  “I have been restless lately,” Father said. “I do not feel shame by admitting that my debts are considerable. At one time, I had obligations to pay rent on six lodgings.”

  “If not for all your books, Father, you wouldn’t have needed most of them.” I turned to tell Constable Becker, “He fills one house with books and then rents another and another.”

  “That is family business, Emily. No need to share the details. Some landlords were so pitiless that they pursued me into court and even into jail.”

  “Jail?” Ryan asked, straightening.

  “In jail, how was I to work and pay my debts and support my dear now-departed wife and what were then eight children? Thanks to friends who paid my bond, I was released, but then of course I owed my friends as well as the landlords, the butcher, and the baker, and you can see how everything mounted. Sometimes, to avoid the bailiff, I was forced to sleep in haystacks, but that was nothing compared to when I lived on the cold streets of London when I was seventeen.”

  Becker frowned. “Miss De Quincey, does your father always talk this way?”

  “What way?” Father wanted to know, puzzled.

  “So many words so quickly.”

  “Not quickly,” Father rejoined. “It’s everyone else who talks slowly. I hang on to their words, wishing they would proceed with their thoughts. Constable Becker, I don’t wish to be forward, but blood is seeping through the left knee of your uniform.”

  “Blood?” Becker looked down. “Oh. I must have torn one of my stitches.”

  “Stitches?”

  “Last night, I was attacked by two pigs.”

  Now it was Father’s turn to look baffled.

  Mrs. Warden squeezed her hooped dress through the doorway, carrying a tray of tea and biscuits that she set on a table. She poured the tea but then stood in the background.

  “Thank you,” Ryan said with a tone of finality.

  Disappointed, Mrs. Warden returned to the kitchen, where she no doubt continued to eavesdrop.

  “The murders,” Father said.

  “Yes,” Ryan said. “Last night near Ratcliffe Highway.”

  Father’s blue eyes contracted. “How many victims?”

  “Five. Three adults and two children.”

  “Oh, my,” Father said. With a look of defeat, he reached into the left side of his coat,
pulled out a flask, and poured a ruby liquid into his teacup.

  “What are you doing?” Ryan asked.

  “Taking my medicine.”

  “Medicine? What kind of medicine comes in a flask? Is that alcohol?”

  “No. Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. But no.”

  “Don’t tell me that’s laudanum.”

  “As I said, I’m taking my medicine. I’m subject to severe facial pains. Laudanum is the only way to relieve them.”

  “Facial pains?”

  “And a stomach disorder.” Father took a deep swallow from his teacup. “It dates back to when I was a young man.”

  Constable Becker pointed. “But you poured at least an ounce.”

  Father took another swallow.

  “Stop.” The constable reached for the teacup. “Good heavens, man, are you trying to kill yourself?”

  Father pulled the teacup close to him, preventing Constable Becker from grabbing it. “Kill myself?” The film of sweat on Father’s brow became more noticeable and yet duller. “What a strange idea.” He pointed toward an object that Ryan held. “I see you have my latest book.”

  “ ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,’ ” Ryan said.

  Father swallowed more liquid from his cup. “Yes, that is an essay in the book.”

  Becker looked at me and said, “Miss De Quincey, perhaps you’d like to join your housekeeper in the kitchen or else go to your room.”

  “Why on earth would I wish to do that?”

  “I’m afraid our conversation might disturb you.”

  “I’ve read Father’s work. I know what it contains.”

  “Even so, what we need to talk about might shock you.”

  “In that event, if I find it shocking, I shall leave,” I pronounced.

  No one said anything for a moment. Ryan and Constable Becker glanced at one another, as if determining how to continue.

  “Very well, if you insist on remaining,” Ryan said. “In eighteen eleven, on Ratcliffe Highway, John Williams entered a linen shop that was about to close. He used a mallet with the initials J. P. to shatter the heads of the shopkeeper, his assistant, his wife, and his infant. Then he slit the baby’s throat.”

  It was my impression that Ryan was needlessly graphic in an effort to persuade me to leave the room, but I steeled myself and showed no reaction.

  “That is correct,” Father said.

  “The same thing happened last night in the Ratcliffe Highway area,” Ryan told him. “Except that two children were killed, not one.”

  “Two children?” Father slowly set down his cup. “Oh.”

  “We have numerous questions,” Ryan continued. “Why do you know so many precise details about murders that occurred forty-three years ago? Why, in all that time, did you persist in praising those murders? Why did you feel compelled to write about them in extremely graphic detail as recently as last month? Finally, I’ll ask you again, where were you at ten o’clock last night?”

  “And I’ll answer again, I was walking the streets.”

  “Which streets?”

  “I have no idea. I was lost in my thoughts.”

  “You expect us to believe that you paid no attention to your surroundings?”

  “In the fog? Even if I hadn’t been preoccupied, there weren’t any surroundings to notice.”

  “Preoccupied about what?”

  “A personal matter.”

  “When it comes to murder, no topic is too personal for us to ask about.”

  I couldn’t keep silent any longer. “This is outrageous. Surely, you are not suggesting that my father had something to do with the murders?”

  “He’s an expert in them. He’s obsessed about them.”

  “Murders forty-three years ago!” Embarrassed that I’d raised my voice, I moderated it, but my tone was nonetheless stern. “My father is a professional magazine writer. On occasion, he writes about sensational topics so that he can help publishers sell their magazines. Murder is a popular topic.”

  “Last night it certainly was,” Ryan said. He looked at Constable Becker, as if giving him a cue to take over.

  “Miss De Quincey,” Becker said, obviously trying to win me over, “do you have any idea when your father might have returned from walking the streets?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know when he went out?”

  “I heard his footsteps on the stairs about nine o’clock.”

  “An hour to reach the shop at ten,” Ryan said to himself. “It’s do-able for a man accustomed to walking a great deal.”

  “Did you hear him return?” Constable Becker asked me.

  “No.”

  “Three o’clock!” Mrs. Warden called from the kitchen.

  “That is true,” Father said. “I returned at three o’clock.”

  “Plenty of time for you to have walked back from the shop,” Ryan murmured to himself.

  I no longer cared that I raised my voice. “Look at this man! He’s sixty-nine! He’s short! He’s frail!”

  “Thin,” Father said. “But please, Emily, not frail. This month alone, and it’s only the eleventh, I walked one hundred and fifty miles.”

  “Do you honestly believe my father has the strength to bludgeon three adults with a… what did you say was used?”

  “A ship carpenter’s mallet,” Becker answered.

  “It sounds heavy.”

  “A sturdy tool.”

  “Look at my father’s arms.”

  They turned in Father’s direction, and perhaps it was the effect of the laudanum, but he seemed smaller in the chair, his shoes barely touching the floor.

  “What you describe would have been impossible for him,” I emphasized.

  “Alone,” Ryan said. “But two people could have done it, one with the knowledge and one with the strength.”

  “You are making me impatient,” I said. “The next thing, you’ll suggest that I’m the one who helped Father kill all those people. Would you like to know where I was at ten o’clock last night?”

  “Honestly, Miss De Quincey, I don’t think—”

  “In bed. But I’m afraid I don’t have a witness.”

  Color rose to both men’s beard-stubbled cheeks.

  “A ship carpenter’s mallet?” Father asked.

  “Yes,” Ryan answered. “You understand the significance?”

  “The parallel was that exact?”

  “More than can be imagined. The mallet had initials stamped into it by a nail. Would you care to guess what the initials are?”

  “J. P.? It’s not possible.”

  “But it is. The initials are indeed J. P., the same initials that were on the mallet used in the murders forty-three years ago, the same initials that you wrote about in your essay on how murder is such a wonderful art. Now I must insist”—Ryan stood—“that you come with us to Scotland Yard, where you can answer our questions in a more appropriate setting.”

  “No,” Father said. “I won’t come with you to Scotland Yard.”

  Ryan stepped closer. “You’re mistaken. Believe me, sir, you will come with us to Scotland Yard. Whether under your own power or under duress, that is your choice.”

  “No,” Father repeated. He drank the last of the laudanum in his cup. “Not Scotland Yard. I’m afraid there is only one place to discuss this.”

  “Oh? And where might that be?”

  “Where the murders occurred.”

  6

  The Patron of Gravediggers

  DARKNESS MERGED WITH THE THICKENING FOG. On the street outside the shop, the lights of police lanterns no longer zigzagged urgently. The investigation had reached its limits—no more neighbors to question, no more places to search.

  Nonetheless the street was chaotic. As Ryan and Becker climbed down from the police wagon, they assessed the troubling circumstance that confronted them. Although most of the daytime crowd was gone, having retreated from whatever terrors the new night concealed, those who remained were d
runk and made enough noise for a crowd ten times larger. They carried clubs, swords, and rifles. There was nothing Ryan could do about their weapons. In the absence of gun laws, even children could own firearms.

  “How long will you stay and keep us safe?” a neighbor demanded from a constable outside the shop.

  “As long as we’re investigating.”

  “But how long? Tomorrow night?”

  “Possibly,” the policeman replied.

  “Possibly? What about next week? Will you be here then?”

  “I’m not certain. A lot of streets aren’t being patrolled while we’re here. Soon we’ll need to get back to our districts.”

  “My God, we’ll all be murdered unless we find the killer ourselves!”

  Amid the clamor, Ryan noticed that the Opium-Eater and his daughter had climbed down from the police wagon without assistance. Despite his considerable efforts to dissuade her, De Quincey’s daughter had refused to be left behind while De Quincey had refused to go without her.

  “I need to make certain that Father takes care of himself,” she had said, and to prove it she’d insisted that De Quincey eat several biscuits as the wagon transported them. “The state of his stomach is such that he eats as little as possible. This is his first food since breakfast.”

  Ryan had never encountered a pair quite like them. At five feet ten inches, Ryan was taller than most people in 1854, a requirement for being a policeman. In contrast, De Quincey was shorter than the average height of five feet four inches, his thin frame making him seem even shorter, perhaps only five feet. Yet the Opium-Eater had a way of talking that was out of proportion to his size, making him fill the space he occupied.

  As for the daughter, she was the most strong-minded female Ryan had ever met. Her “bloomer” style of dress indicated her independent attitude. While he reluctantly admitted that she was attractive, with pleasing features, blue eyes that matched her father’s, and smooth, brown hair pulled back behind her head, he barely controlled his exasperation when he told her, “You see how inconvenient it was for you to have insisted on coming with us. Now you’ll be forced to stand here in the cold with a constable to protect you from this rabble while we go inside.”

  “And why, please tell, would I wish to remain out here in the cold?”